Freedom is more than a matter of aimless choice. It is not enough to affirm my liberty by choosing “something.” I must use and develop my freedom by choosing something good.
Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, “Conscience, Freedom, and Prayer”
A so-called freedom
Riling people up
To tote their guns
And speak their hate
Bound by their forgetfulness
That the meek shall inherit the earth
And peacemakers be called the children of God
May they remember
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Photo by dw
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.
Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, “Conscience, Freedom, and Prayer”
Selfishness is doomed to frustration, centered as it is upon a lie.
To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god.
This from Thomas Merton brings to mind words of Jesus:
If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.
Matthew 10:39, Peterson, Eugene H.. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language . The Navigators. Kindle Edition.
You might be more familiar with the words this way:
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Harper Bibles. NRSV Bible with the Apocrypha (Kindle Location 75096). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I don’t even know where to start. Which strand of thoughts, of the many, do I pick up and try to pull from the knotted mess that’s there?
One is about the rampant corruption in politics in our country and around the world…bending all things to the will of powerful people.
Another is about the kind of economics that steals from the poor and gives to the already-wealthy…selfishness.
Another is about the stockpiling of weaponry, both nationally and individually…first concern is to look after yourself.
Another is about speech and how we choose to use it…exclusively for ourselves.
Each of these threads gets and deserves plenty of air time in our public discourse.
But I’m holding back the temptation to enter the fray.
Because maybe I need to start, to remember as best I can always to start, with the thread of my inner life.
The tragic and tragically flawed little god in there who rants and raves at even the smallest inconvenience daring to cross it’s path.
That spews all the correct answers to all the important questions and deserves accolades commensurate with this great wisdom, greater even than Solomon’s.
That can’t seem to go a day without chocolate of just the right darkness or coffee made from just the right bean brewed in just the right way.
Maybe that is the thread I should start with.
Maybe that little tyrant needs to be reminded about the quotes from Merton and Matthew first.
Before it commences tying all the other threads together into a tangle made in it’s own image.
Grace and peace to you…
dw
Door photo by dw
Inciting evil
To stop another evil:
Is this doing good?
dw, 3 Sep 2021
Any words I might offer
Would detract from these
Stuck in my soul
Oozing the cure for not caring enough
Wrapping the wounds
In tight bands of open-eyed hope and mercy
With no further ado, here are the words, words I gathered from James Cone in his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree; words I hope will wound and heal in your soul as they have in mine. Grace and peace to you…
We are very good at choosing and using words that divide.
Maybe we use them because we don’t really choose them – they are near at hand, floating in the air around us.
Like COVID.
becoming flame 